One Noble Function
by Namaste
Summary: House and Wilson and their final road trip. Series will cover various points along the way. Title is from Jack Kerouac's On The Road - "We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one noble function of the time, move."
1. Atlantic City

"With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off." - Jack Kerouac

House let Wilson pick out the bikes. Once he saw them, he blamed his poor judgment on endorphins.

"Endorphins?" Wilson loosened the strap that tied his bike down to the trailer.

"Sure. From the Greek. For the natural high you get from faking your own ending," House said. "Either that, or post-traumatic stress from surviving a deadly fire. Pick whichever one you like."

Wilson looked over his shoulder at the truck driver who'd delivered the bikes, probably checking to see if he was paying attention, House thought. The guy hadn't even blinked, but Wilson would likely still give him a big tip, just in case.

"They're classic American touring bikes." Wilson rolled his bike down the ramp and onto the pavement.

"Classic," House said, "from the Greek, meaning boring." House popped his own bike onto its kickstand and looked at the two bikes side-by-side. They were nearly identical, each with chrome accents and a soot black teardrop of a gas tank. House's sat a little lower, which House hoped would mean he'd find it a little easier to swing his leg over at the end of a long day. The saddles were designed for comfort and hours in the saddle, rather than the aerodynamics of his old Honda.

They were stripped down to the basics. No windshields, no saddlebags. There would only be enough room to carry whatever they could stash beneath the saddle or strap onto the back. Just as well, House thought. He'd already let everything go nearly a week ago, gone like the dust after a late-summer storm.

Well, not quite everything. That first night, while Wilson and Foreman sat shiva in the dark - waiting for the news they'd both expected for years- House had gone to his apartment one last time. He filled a bag with some clean clothes and stuffed his pockets with all the cash and Vicodin he'd stashed away just in case of an emergency.

Once he was done, he'd stood in the doorway for a few seconds, let his eyes take in everything else he'd once cared about - the piano, the guitars, the books, the TV. It turned out to be easier to walk way than he'd expected.

He'd had enough money to pay for a cheap motel, food for a few days and two pre-paid cellphones. He'd also slipped one of the funeral home workers a couple of twenties to slide one of the phones into Wilson's pocket while he stayed out of sight and listened.

Wilson had paid since then - for House's hotel, the take-out pizza, the beer - and the bikes. And now that hefty tip to the driver that House predicted.

House looked over at the bikes again. "I'll need at least 200," he said.

"What for?" Wilson closed his wallet, but didn't put it away.

"OK, make it 300."

Wilson shoved the wallet in his pocket.

"Four?"

Wilson straddled his bike and grabbed his helmet. He fiddled with the clasp, trying to get the fit of the strap just right.

"You'll get it back, once your guy sells my place and settles the estate," House pointed out.

"That could take longer than I've got."

"You'll get more than that just from the piano, and that won't take as long to sell."

Wilson stopped toying with the clasp.

"I need a new helmet," House said.

"I got you one."

"Yeah, I noticed. It matches yours." House plopped the helmet Wilson had brought him on top of his bike. "I need a real helmet."

"That won't cost 400 bucks."

"No, but I can think of someone who will."

"Better not be one of your regulars," Wilson said. "It'd shock the hell out of them. There were a half-a-dozen at your funeral."

"I noticed. Sweet girls."

"They paid for a wreath."

"I thought the white roses were a little over the top."

"I told your Mom they were from some of the nurses."

"She buy it?"

Wilson shook his head. He turned the ignition switch on the bike and fingered the start button, but didn't start it yet. "I don't have $400 on me."

House held back the grin for a moment. "I know where you can find a bank."

Wilson handed over the cash after he managed to drive the bike the two miles to the local branch. He only stalled it out twice in the parking lot, and another three times at the red lights.

The sun had gone down by the time they made it back to the hotel. Wilson parked the bike beneath a street lamp, popped it up on its stand, but didn't get off it yet.

"It's going to take me a few more days," he said, "to wrap things up."

House nodded.

"It's -" Wilson took off his helmet, stared down at the bike for a few moments. "Complicated." He made a vague gesture to everything around them. "Everything."

"Your patients will be fine."

"They're not the only things I'm leaving."

House wondered how many times Wilson had stopped by to see his parents, just one last time. How long he'd waited to tell Danny. Hell, he'd probably drafted a long apology to each ex-wife about why he wouldn't see them again.

"Not getting cold feet, are you?"

Wilson smiled then, and took the key out of the ignition. "Not a chance." He swung his leg over the bike. "Don't let anything happen to it before I get back."

"Not a chance," House said.

Three days later, Wilson stood with his hands on hips, staring at House's bike.

"Four hundred bucks?" he asked, "to paint on some flames?"

"Of course not." House stroked the tank's side. "Do you know how many colors and coats of paint it takes to get flames to look right? I only had them throw on a coat of gold." He reached into his pocket. "I needed the rest for this."

He held out a driver's license and Wilson nabbed it from House's fingers. He stared at the name. "Oliver Mo -" he stopped himself and stared at House. "Wasn't that your last patient's name?"

House shrugged. "Only fair. He used my name."

"Because you," Wilson lowered his voice, "swapped your dental records for his."

"And he ended up with a lot better funeral than he would have if he'd just been another drug addict John Doe who OD'd in the streets."

Wilson shook his head. He looked at the license, flicked it between his fingers. "It sure looks real."

"Because it is."

Wilson raised his eyebrows.

"Stopped at the MVC, told them all about how I'd lost my license in a fire," House took the license back from Wilson. "The best lies are the ones that are closest to the truth."

"And no one thought it was strange that you didn't look anything like the old photo?"

"That's why it cost so much," House said. "Special handling charges to make sure no one asked too many questions. And why I could only afford one coat of paint."

Wilson held up his hands, seemed to be about to start a half-dozen different lectures before he shook his head and laughed instead. He grabbed his helmet.

"So, Oliver," he finally said. "You ready to go?"


	2. Washington DC

"It was my first memory." Wilson stood in front of the lunar module, a slight smile on his face. He didn't seem to notice the school kids trying to squeeze past him and get closer to the railing and get a better view of it. "I was sitting in my father's lap and we watched Neil Armstrong climb down."

He took one hand off the metal barrier, as if he could reach across the open space and touch it.

"That's crap." House's voice cut through the noise of the kids and the foggy haze of the past. "That is not your first memory."

"Yes it is," Wilson said. "I should know."

"You were what, a year old?"

"About."

"Then you don't remember Apollo 11." House walked away from the display, swinging his cane out in front of him as a warning to any kid who tried to get too close.

"I remember it." Wilson followed him. A couple of boys crowded into the space he'd left behind. "Vividly."

"You've seen the footage of the landing so many times, you just think you remember it." House saw an empty seat on a bench across the hall and he headed for it. "All you're remembering is the exact same film that everyone has seen replayed since then."

Wilson stopped, looked up at the other displays in the central hall of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, airplanes and jets suspended from the ceiling and the sunshine streaming through the glass panels of the roof.

"No, I remember it," he insisted. "My brother got sick. My Mom was upset because she thought she'd miss the landing when she was cleaning him up. That part wasn't on the news."

"And how many times did your family tell that story?" House didn't wait for a reply. "You're picturing the things they told you that happened to them that night, and combining that with the news footage to create a false memory."

Wilson sighed, sat next to House. "Why do you always have to do this?"

House didn't have an answer for him. He looked away from Wilson, back across the room at the module - a copy of the one he knew he'd seen that night.

He remembered it perfectly, both the version here and the one in his own memory. Dad was stationed at Pendleton then, and his commanding officer threw a party for all the families in his squad. They weren't supposed to bring any food, but Mom insisted on bringing her peach pie. Dad hadn't been happy about that she didn't follow the rules until he saw his C.O. taking a second slice.

When it took longer than expected for Armstrong and Aldrin to make it out of the capsule in that long summer twilight of California, the men gathered in the living room cracked jokes.

"You want a job done on time, you call in the Marines," the Captain said, "not the Navy or Air Force."

The Captain liked to brag about how NASA had come to his squad in the early 50s and tried to recruit him, but he'd stayed in the Corps. According to the C.O., it was his decision. He always talked about how the war in Korea was more important than some science fiction story the NASA boys kept claiming. John laughed at the story when the captain wasn't around.

All the jokes stopped and the room went silent when the capsule door finally opened. No one even seemed to be breathing.

Dad was the second in command, so he had the second-best seat in the room. He let Greg sit on the floor in front of him and as Greg shifted forward, he brushed against Dad's legs. They were shaking beneath the sharp creases of the pressed uniform. Dad leaned forward and put his hand on Greg's shoulder - though it wasn't clear if Dad was steadying his own nerves or trying to stop Greg from fidgeting.

The picture on the TV flickered and faded, then turned brighter as Armstrong made his way down the ladder.

"Not everything is about the truth you know," Wilson said, interrupting House's thoughts and jogging them nearly fifty years forward to the museum floor. "Sometimes it's good just to have something happy to hang onto."

House glanced at Wilson, then back at the lunar module. Dad had brought him here, years after that landing, when Dad was assigned to the Pentagon and the module was first put on display. He'd put his hand on Greg's shoulder then too, and pointed out the narrow struts and thin protective shielding.

"They must have been some crazy sons of bitches," he'd said.

The school groups were thinning out now. It must be getting late in the afternoon. House could picture the yellow school buses lining up in front of the building, frustrated chaperones trying to count heads. Wilson got up, wandered a couple of steps away.

"My Dad always had a thing for Lindbergh," House said. He pointed with his cane to another part of the central lobby where the silver Spirit of St. Louis hung from the ceiling. "I think it was because Lindbergh didn't have to answer to anyone once he took off."

House pushed himself off the bench and walked toward the display.

"He needed so much fuel that they didn't even have room for a front-facing windshield, so Lindbergh couldn't see exactly where he was going," he looked back at Wilson. "That sounds like my Dad too."

House walked forward until he was directly under the plane, looking up at its fabric surface and the underside of the single wing. He heard Wilson's footsteps following him.

"It took more than 30 hours to fly to Paris, and the story was that Lindbergh started hallucinating over the middle of the Atlantic - imagining he was having conversations with people who weren't there. Some part of his brain that was still registering what was happening in the real world would trigger those hallucinations to say something that brought him around every time it looked like he'd crash into the waves. He managed to pull up every time"

House finally looked back at Wilson. "Maybe you're right, and maybe it doesn't matter if something's true, if it gets you where you're going."

Then House pivoted on his heel, heading for the exit without a glance back at the plane or the module.

"Of course," House said, "on the other hand, if you're looking for someone to just give you happy platitudes and agree with you whenever you say something stupid, you picked the wrong person to spend the rest of your life with."


	3. Gettysburg

The year he turned 12, Danny became obsessed with the Civil War. It started with a movie, or maybe a class assignment. Wilson couldn't really remember now, but he could remember Danny tearing through every book in Mom and Dad's library, then sweeping through the school library and spending half of the summer in the city library.

He painted his plastic army men with paint left over from his model airplanes - tiny brush strokes of blue and gray. He locked himself in his room when he couldn't find anything to replace the cavalry's horses and Mom and Dad refused to buy him a separate set of soldiers.

"It's a phase," Mom had said. "It won't last. It's like the dinosaurs and the models. Give him a few weeks and he'll forget all about it."

She told James to humor him and keep him company. "You're his big brother. It's your job to make him feel better."

The interest didn't fade, though. Looking back now, Wilson told himself that he should have seen it as something other than the last phase of childhood. It was more likely the first of signs of the mania that would hit full force in just a few years. At the time, though, James did what he was told. He'd feign interest as Danny drew out intricate maps of battle plans and troop movements.

Before long, Danny begged for a trip to Civil War sites for their family vacations. James would add his voice of support - knowing that Mom and Dad would never give up the regular house at the shore.

"It's important," Danny would say. "It's history."

"It's 400 miles out of the way," Dad would answer, shutting down every argument.

Wilson could still see the shattered look on Danny's face now as he stared out at the road through the diner window, pretending he didn't notice as House helped himself to the last few bites of the French toast off Wilson's plate.

"We should go to Gettysburg," Wilson said.

House checked his watch. "Eight fifty-two," he said. "I'll mark that down as the moment we had the first clear sign that the cancer has spread to your brain."

"It's not a symptom."

"Really? Because I can't think of any other explanation."

"Gettysburg is important."

"It's boring."

"It's history."

"Like I said. Boring." House reached across the table for another piece of French toast. Wilson blocked him and finished it himself.

"I suppose you don't want to go because your Dad forced you to go to all the Civil War sites when you were a kid," Wilson said.

"Nope. He hated listening to anyone talk about someone who wasn't him."

"That's something he passed down to you, genetics or not." Wilson stared out the window again. They were less than a hundred miles away from Gettysburg. It was closer than Danny had ever been. Unless it was one of the places Danny ran to sometime during his lost years.

He wondered if Danny even cared about the Civil War anymore. He rarely seemed to care about anything much. He was taking his meds diligently now, but they seemed to dull some of his brightest edges even as they helped him regain control. He'd barely reacted when Wilson stopped to see him one last time and told him he wouldn't be back. Danny had just nodded and looked at a spot on the wall somewhere to the right of Wilson's shoulder, though Wilson knew the walls of Danny's room were bare - unlike the bedroom wall back at home when he was a kid, covered with maps and photos of Lee and Jackson, Lincoln and Grant.

"You don't have to come," Wilson told House. "I can meet you in a day or two in Lancaster. Or you can go to Intercourse and make rude jokes about the Amish and their town names."

House scowled. "And who's going to whine about my jokes if you're not there?"

Wilson took a last sip of coffee and pulled a twenty dollar bill from his wallet. He placed it next to the check.

"Fine," House said. "One day. And jokes about Intercourse are way too easy. Wait until we get to Bird-In-Hand."

It was dark by the time they made it to Gettysburg. House had insisted they ride the wooden roller coaster at the park outside Lancaster, and Wilson couldn't find any reason to argue with him. Until the fourth trip.

When they rolled into town, the cemetery's gates were closed and the museum shut down for the night.

"We might as well push on," House said. "Nothing to see here. Probably sold out all the rooms at Ye Olde Hotel too."

Wilson ignored him, and found a place across the street from the main entrance. "The park opens at 6 a.m.," he said. "I'll be over there and back before you even wake up."

House just snorted and let his door slam behind him.

The sun had just cleared the ridge on the east side of town - Seminary Ridge, Wilson thought to himself, remembering the words written down in Danny's hand on homemade maps on lined notebook paper. Wilson rode slowly past the fence separating the cemetery from the battlefield, trying to keep the engine's sound as low as possible.

It was a clear morning, just a hint of clouds in the sky. It was cool - still late spring in Pennsylvania. Wilson remembered Danny going on and on about how hot it had been during the battle. He'd insisted on draping himself in an old wool blanket and walking through the back yard in the heat of midday, so he could feel what it had been like for the soldiers in their heavy uniforms.

It was easy to follow the battle lines. Monuments battled for space on both sides of the narrow road. Men frozen in time with their muskets over their shoulders, men on horseback with swords drawn overhead pointing across quiet land, cannons that would never fire again aimed at somewhere to the west.

He pulled over when the trees thinned out, and turned off the engine. The roads were nearly empty this early in the day. One sedan was following the same route he was, but it kept going up toward the high ground south of town.

Wilson slung his leg over the bike and took off his helmet. The view was clear down the slope with just a low mist hovering over the grass. There was a farm at the far end of the field and as Wilson walked down the path toward the fence line, he thought he heard a rooster's crow.

"Here," Danny had said, again and again, telling James the story of the battle as if James had never heard it before. "That's where the fight was the worst. Pickett's men had to cross the open land, going uphill, with the shells and the bullets picking them off, one after the other."

Wilson took a step toward the fence, stepping off the paved path and on to the dirt and grass.

"Where the fence turned, some of them made it all the way to the Union lines. They were just wailing away on each other," Danny had always acted out this part of the story, using his BB gun as a prop, swinging it above his head, then jabbing it in front of him. James usually found himself jumping aside, never really sure if Danny was so lost in the story that he didn't see him standing there.

Wilson saw the break in the fence, the spot where it angled away from the road.

"They said that there was so much blood, the ground turned red," Danny would say.

Wilson looked down at his feet. The ground felt soft here, like after a hard spring rain. He wondered if the bloody ground had felt muddy and soft then. The dirt was a rich black soil, but somewhere down there, on some microscopic level, there was still blood. He stooped down, felt the dirt between his fingers. It was damp and clung to his fingertips.

Wilson looked out across the field and the mist rising slowly as the morning sun heated the land. He thought maybe he saw something moving in the tall grass. He leaned forward. The rooster crowed again.

Then the sound of an engine broke the quiet, a familiar engine. House's bike, revved up and moving far faster than the posted speed limit. Wilson checked his watch. It was just after seven o'clock. House usually didn't stir until nearly nine, but here he was. House's tire squealed when he hit the brakes, the bike sliding sideways on the asphalt before he brought it to a full stop.

"I told you history was boring," House said after he'd turned off the engine. "Nothing but statues and monuments."

"It's not all boring." Wilson looked back across the field. The mist was still there, but the only thing to see was a cow moving slowly across the pasture and a couple of starlings flitting overhead.

Maybe Danny would have liked to come here, he thought. Maybe part of him was still that kid who loved to know history. He could have brought him here, Wilson thought. He should have, when there was still time.

When he finally turned away from the fence, he saw House staring at him - his eyes studying Wilson in that look that always meant House was trying to figure something out, trying to wrest some secret out of Wilson's past. Something that Wilson didn't want to give.

Wilson didn't look him in the eye as he walked back to his bike, didn't look at House at all until he had his sunglasses on. He put on his helmet and fastened the strap and took one last look across the field. He could write his parents at least and tell them to bring Danny. Or maybe just put some money aside for Danny to come on his own, when he was ready.

Either way, Wilson's time wouldn't stretch far enough for everything he might have done. Should have done. Danny would have to find his own way from now on. But maybe Wilson could find a postcard on their way out of town. Something with a map. Something that Danny could hang on those bare walls to remind him of somewhere else. Some other time.

House was still staring at him. Wilson didn't wait for any of the questions that he knew House wanted to ask.

"I could go for some cinnamon rolls." he said. "Sound good?"

House nodded and Wilson led the way back into town.


	4. Blue Ridge

"First rule of the road," House had said on the second morning out of New Jersey. "No maps."

"You realize this is the fifth 'first rule of the road' you've had, right?" Wilson pointed out. "Last time it was about the size of bushes required when you had to pee. The time before that, it was about always stopping at any cafe with homemade pie. The time before that -"

House had ignored him, and Wilson had ignored his rules. Except for the one about pie. That one had worked out nicely so far. The one upside he'd found to his shortened life span: no diets, no carb counting, no cholesterol checks.

But Wilson still took a look whenever he spotted a map. He liked to know where he was, and where he was going. And what he might miss. So at random rest stops and gas stations, he'd glance at the faded map pinned to the wall or spread beneath a sheet of plastic near the cash register.

At hotels, he'd nab the brochures at the front desk when House wasn't around. He'd spread them out across the bedspread. Most of them were frustratingly the same - a local pool with a few water slides that called itself a water park, a local history museum, a petting zoo - and he'd toss those into the garbage. The best of them he'd leaf through for a while, trying to imagine what it would be like to go to those places, to live in a town where they'd spent years restoring an old narrow gauge railroad or an opera house built in some distant past.

He even memorized details about the best places, and would guide the bike in that direction when he was in the lead.

House preferred to navigate by billboard. He'd wave at one advertising a nearby strip club as they roared past and follow the bright red arrow pointing to the left or right or straight ahead. Twice, he'd stopped at a crossroads, pulled out a coin and told Wilson to call it in the air.

"Heads we go left, tails we go right."

Wilson wasn't even certain exactly which state they were in now. Somewhere in the Smoky Mountains, anyway, following the ridge of the foothills. The road curved and swerved past trees and cliff walls, dropped down into deep green valleys, then crossed over old bridges that spanned narrow rivers far below, the water moving fast and cold down the mountainside toward the sea.

It was late spring in the valleys, but a thousand or so feet up, everything lagged a few weeks behind. In the dark shadows of the mountains, some trees still had the last of their buds. The bushes were losing the last of their yellow and purple flowers.

Every few miles, a dirt road would suddenly appear from out of the forests, curving out of sight, going somewhere Wilson would never see.

House was riding fast, leaning into the curves, gunning it up every hill. Halfway up a pass, Wilson saw a road up ahead, leading up some unseen trail. He found himself turning left, taking it before he even thought about what he was doing.

The trees were even thicker here, crowding out the sky. The light had a greenish tint, filtered through the leaves. Wilson rode slowly and swung wide to avoid a puddle that took up half the roadway. He found smooth passage nearly in the center of the road and settled into it.

There was a mailbox up ahead, on the right, and two tracks leading up toward a clearing. There was a low porch in front of a white house in the only bit of sun and a pickup truck parked to the side. Someone had planted tulips in neat rows across the front, alongside the two steps leading up to the porch. Wilson slowed down, but didn't see anyone around.

There was a narrow garden plot at the edge of the driveway, where it could get the most sun. Wilson imagined kneeling in the dark soil, planting tomatoes and beans and peppers. There would be squash for the fall and a fence to try and keep the animals out. He'd end up yelling at House two or three times every week to watch out for the garden whenever he'd drive in too fast, not paying attention. House would put up with the nagging only because Wilson would agree to plant ghost chilis, and let House challenge him into trying to eat one.

The bike jolted on a rut in the dirt, and Wilson shook himself out of his daydream, looked back at the road. It began to narrow a little less than a mile beyond the house. It went down to one lane as the trees closed in. A little further, and grass creeped into the center of the road, turning the dirt road into a two-track. The hard dirt pack got rougher and he held tight to the handlebars to keep control of the bike.

Finally, the road petered out to nothing more than a trail, still headed up the mountain. Wilson stopped the bike there, turned off the motor. He heard the faint whine of a chain saw echoing off the hills, but he wasn't sure where it was coming from.

There were birds, but not as many as he expected to hear. Squirrels were chittering in the trees above him, rustling the leaves as they jumped from one branch to another.

Wilson wasn't sure how long he sat there. At some point, the chain saw went quiet. Clouds passed over the sun, and the valley looked darker than before. He zipped up his coat as the breeze picked up, turned the bike around and headed down the trail.

It took less time to get back to the main road than he'd expected. He'd slowed as he passed the house again, but still saw no one. He picked up speed once he hit the blacktop and turned in the direction House had been going. He wondered how far House had gone before he realized Wilson wasn't behind him.

A couple of miles up the road, the land flattened out slightly, and a collection of houses gathered themselves into a town. He passed a church and an old school. House's bike was parked in front of a store - something looking like it was straight out of cliche with a small porch and benches in front of windows advertising beer and meat specials.

House stepped out of the front door as Wilson turned off the engine. "Hope you won't worried," he said.

"Thirsty." House popped open a can of Coke. He leaned against the railing and tried to look bored, but even from the bike Wilson saw the lines on House's face that always grew deeper when something was bothering him, and always gave him away despite anything he said.

"So am I," Wilson said.

There was a faded map next to the cooler, and Wilson studied it for a few minutes before he grabbed a root beer and headed for the counter.

House was sitting on one of the benches overlooking the parking lot and the town, and Wilson sat next to him. The sun had come back out, glowing down on the road leading up the pass.

"Guy in there says there's a good barbecue joint about 20 miles east of here," House said. "They do the whole hog."

Wilson thought about the map, and the brochures he'd looked at last night. One of them mentioned a cave that stretched for miles under the mountain, a place where both Indians and moonshiners had hidden away from the government. Maybe he could find the right road and lead them there.

Of course, barbecue sounded pretty good too, if he couldn't find the way.

He popped open his drink and leaned back against the building. "Sounds good," he said. "We should try and find it."


	5. Savannah

Two years into his third med school, House learned the best places to find cheap, greasy food anywhere in America were at truck stops and the closest diner to every major hospital.

So far, he hadn't been wrong yet. Somewhere near Savannah, the fence next to the employee parking lot angled sharply to the left to leave space for a concrete and stucco facade with a half-dozen of its own parking spaces. A neon light in the window boasted it was open 24 hours.

"Does everything here have pecans?" Wilson whined as he glanced down one side of the menu.

"I think the rhubarb pie is safe. Besides, you like pecans."

"I think those pecan pancakes with pecan maple syrup and pecan whipped cream pushed me over the edge this morning."

House drank his coffee. He wasn't hungry. The Vicodin was taking too long to kick in and he fought the urge to push against the gnarled knot of muscles that were cramping from too many miles on the bike. It wouldn't do any good anyway. He'd never ridden so many days and so many miles on a bike - even before the infarction. He half expected Wilson to declare a break any day now. If Wilson noticed, he'd probably head for the closest hotel and make some half-assed comment about being tired. They'd never make it across the country if Wilson kept insisting on taking breaks.

And at this point, House wasn't certain if he'd put up much of an argument.

"How about the grilled cheese?" he asked. "No pecans there."

Wilson pointed to the spot on the menu that offered all sandwiches on pecan wheat bread.

"So get the rhubarb pie."

Wilson sighed and studied the menu closer. He only looked up when door opened, carefully looking at everyone who came into the diner.

"You really think you're going to see someone you know?"

"It's not about me." Wilson put down the menu. "What if someone knows you?"

"Well, yes. I am world famous. I noticed the paparazzi following us for the last few days."

"Not kidding. You published, you presented papers at conferences -"

"Twenty years ago."

"Not that long ago. And you worked in Atlanta."

"For six months, until they fired me."

"Sooner or later, chances are that someone's going to show up who knows you."

"Chances are even better that we could be hit by lightning. You want to pull off the road every time there's a single cloud in the sky too?"

Wilson held up his hands. "OK, fine. You're the one going to prison, not me."

"Accessory after the fact," House pointed out. "We can be roomies."

"I'll play the cancer card. Besides, I'll be dead before they get to trial." Wilson picked up the menu again. "I'll quit worrying, if that'll make you happy."

"You're genetically incapable of not worrying." House took another sip of his coffee. He found himself glancing at the door when it opened. It was no one he knew. He looked back over at Wilson, who pretended to be reading the options for an omelette.

"Just get the pie," House said.

Wilson put the menu down and leaned forward on the table. "I have a confession to make."

"Just so we're clear, I'm not a priest and you're Jewish."

"I've never had rhubarb pie."

"You're 45 years old."

"44."

House ignored him. "And you've been cooking for like 20 years."

"15."

"And you love diners."

Wilson didn't argue that point.

"And you go to crappy diners with me."

"So?"

"And you claim you've never had rhubarb pie?"

"Just, never got around to it."

"No little old lady patient brought you one? Never had a mother-in-law force you to try hers?"

Wilson shook his head.

"Then time's running out." House closed his menu and tossed it on the table. He flagged down the waitress. "Two slices of rhubarb pie."

"Sorry hon," she said. "We're all out."


	6. Cave Spring

_Night Swimming_

"What if someone sees us?"

"What if they do?"

"I freely admit that I'm not perfectly versed in the laws of Georgia, but I'm pretty sure skinny dipping is discouraged."

"They also discourage being an accessory to fraud and aiding and abetting a felon, but that hasn't stopped you."

"That's different."

"Right. Skinny dipping is probably just a misdemeanor. Besides, you were the one complaining that it's too hot."

"That was before I remembered."

"Remembered what, that you didn't pack a swimsuit?"

"No. That the movie 'Deliverance' took place somewhere near here."

"OK. This time you may have a point."

_Underground_

Wilson paid an extra three bucks for the guidebook to the cave and read it out loud at every numbered guidepost as they headed further and further under ground.

The first open area had sheltered families hiding from Sherman's troops on their march to the sea, he read, and before that had hidden runaway slaves on their journey north.

"I suppose you're expecting me to make some comment about irony now," House said.

Wilson looked at him and waited.

"Sorry." House headed toward the far end of the cave. "Too easy."

Two stops past that the book claimed the cave had been a storehouse for smoked meats and vegetables to protect them from the summer heat.

"Think if we looked long enough we could find a ham sandwich still hidden behind those rocks?"

"Think if I waited long enough you'd stop whining?"

"It's a cave," House said. "It's a big hole in the ground. It's boring."

"It's not boring. It's a natural wonder. It took hundreds of thousands of years of water seeping into stone, drop by drop, to create a cave this size."

"Then it's naturally boring." House headed toward the tracks where the converted coal car rolled past to pick up and drop off tourists along the main path into the cave.

Wilson heard the echo of his own sigh come back at him from the rock walls. He looked over the guide again, letting his eyes follow the dotted lines from one natural room to another. At the center of the cave, the book said, the walls rose hundreds of feet and stalactites hung down from the roof of the cave, growing drip by drip to create new formations. The room looked different now than it had when it was first discovered, and it would change even more in another year, or ten, or 100.

He heard the shuffle of House's steps, the tap of the cane as it hit the stone floor.

"Why'd you want to come anyway?" House was suddenly beside him. The echo had disguised his approach.

"I thought it'd be fun," Wilson said. "Besides, it's supposed to rain all day. Would you rather be out in the storm?"

House walked past him again, toward the edges of the room where photos hung beneath the narrow beam of a spotlight, showing the way things once were. "What made you think it would be fun?"

"Didn't you ever try to dig a cave when you were a kid?"

House didn't answer.

"You know, head out to the woods with your friends and your lunch and keep digging until it was time for dinner?" Wilson grinned. "One summer, we worked at it for three days. We swore we were going to make one big enough so we'd each have our own bunk in there. Furthest we got was a hole just big enough to fit Danny and the dog. The dog hated it."

"The Marines called that destruction of property." House turned toward him. "I tried. The digging thing, anyway. Not so much with the friends. Or the dog either."

House looked around the cave walls: the iron pegs driven deep into stone that may have once held some dried bit of beef, the rocks that were big enough to hold a family's apples for a season, the dark patches were soot probably collected from torches and lamps.

Wilson heard the whine of the electric engine on the coal car that could take them back to the surface, or further into the cave. "We can leave if you want," he said.

House nodded toward the guidebook. "What else does that say is in here?"

Wilson folded back the pages to the map, his fingers following the dotted line. "Says here that one of the rooms was used to cook moonshine during prohibition."

"Does it say if the still is still in operation?"

Wilson closed the book. "I suppose we could find out."

House shrugged. "As long as we're here."


End file.
